Hindus dislike Hollywood making film on re-imagined Ramayana

New York, Oct 13 (IANS) Even as Indians gets ready to celebrate Diwali, marking Lord Rama's return home after vanquishing Ravana, Hollywood has started making a film on the re-imagined Ramayana, based on a Virgin Comics series, and Hindu groups are already imagining that it will distort the most loved epic.

Mandalay Pictures has picked up the rights to the comic series, 'Ramayana 3392 AD', created by New Age guru Deepak Chopra and filmmaker Shekhar Kapoor, entertainment trade magazine Variety reported.

The film will be co-produced by Mark Canton (credits: 'The Spiderwick Chronicles', 'Land of the Dead'), and adapted for the screen by John Collee (credits: 'Happy Feet' about Penguins and the upcoming thriller 'Creation'), although no director has been announced yet.

'Ramayana 3392 AD' comic series was developed by Richard Branson's Virgin Comics, now reorganised as Liquid Comics. Liquid executives Gotham Chopra, Deepak Chopra's son, and Sharad Devarajan will executive produce the picture with Atmosphere Entertainment.

Hindu leader Rajan Zed, who led protests against 'The Love Guru' for lampooning Hinduism, told IANS, 'We are gearing up for a long-drawn-out campaign against 'Ramayana 3392 AD' too.'

Zed said in a statement, 'Hollywood is welcome to make a movie about Ramayana, highly revered scripture of Hinduism, but the final product should be the true depiction of it and not a fantasised or a re-imagined version.'

He said that changing Ramayana to fit the Hollywood machine was likely to hurt Hindu sentiments.

'Ramayana 3392 AD', based on the Indian epic, is an action-adventure story that details a future conflict centring on humanity's last stand against demons. The human, blue-skinned (though traditionally it is Lord Krishna who is depicted in that skin hue) Prince Rama leads his brothers into battle against the demon-lord Ravana.

Mandalay Pictures, part of Mandalay Entertainment Group based in Los Angeles, is a motion picture company which finances, produces and distributes films for the global marketplace. 'Donnie Brasco', starring Al Pacino, is one of the 12 pictures from Mandalay.

Earlier, Sony Online Entertainment optioned to turn 'Ramayana 3392 AD', first published in 2006 as a graphic novel, into a multiplayer online role-playing game.